Will the King of Clay Finally Be Deposed?

By

Jeremy Gordon

Jun 1, 2015 9:35 am ET

Rafael Nadal of Spain reacts as he plays against Andrey Kuznetsov of Russia during their third-round match on Saturday.

European Pressphoto Agency

For the last decade, Rafael Nadal has ruled the French Open with a clay fist, racking up nine times as many titles as he has losses. But the Spaniard’s game has lagged this spring, opening the floor for a big question: Will the King of Clay finally be deposed?

Understand that Nadal is one of the handful of best players of all-time, and that Roland Garros is his domain. He inspires deeply emotional writing, as well as a reactive rolled eye to that emotion, because of what it means to have dominated at one place for so long. Tennis is not a sport where you’re supposed to endure—save for Roger Federer, few players do at a top level—but Rafa burst onto the scene as a teenager and has rarely looked challenged during his decade-long reign. That he’s only 27 is wild, since he’s been embedded in the public mind for so long. (Most 27-year olds have only been blogging for a decade.) But this year, Nadal has looked older than those 27 years, having lost five times on clay—the most since before he’d won his first French Open title—and looked a step slower in losing to plays such as Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray and, uh, Fabio Fognini. “Usually Rafael Nadal is to clay what Michael Phelps is to water, what LeBron James is to hardwood,” writes Sports Illustrated’s Jon Wertheim. “The spring season starts and Nadal is reliably unbreakable and unshakeable. This year? Not so much.” Perhaps that’s why he’s been a bit touchier, too, having requested that an umpire not be assigned to his matches, which is hard to imagine the old Nadal worrying about. A contest with Djokovic looms in the quarterfinal, which is far earlier than they’d usually meet in a Grand Slam except that Nadal’s ranking has plunged during his relative struggles.